Angelique Rising (34 page)

             
"Which it
is,"
Johnson interrupted.

             
"--he has to be stopped. And this way, there'll be less pain for everyone he--"

             
"It's not what I want, Wyatt. Please. Let's just get Lexa and go to the police. I've already hurt him, I took most of his money."

             
Wyatt marveled at the ruthless sweet viciousness of feminine revenge. But it wasn't enough. And he wanted no public trial for Malcolm, he didn't deserve it, and it would hurt too many people. Better he was stopped Wyatt's way.

             
"Sir
,
"
Johnson suddenly said his eyes snapping wide open.
"Containment!"

             
Wyatt sucked in his breath. He'd forgotten. In the heat of his fury, so had Johnson, but Johnson was right. Containment. The answer in the archives, the two angels who'd survived, their Protectors hadn't become evil to stop evil, they had
contained
the evil.

             
Wyatt took in a long deep breath willing himself back under control.

             
"All right Angelique, no killing. Don't worry about anything. Johnson and I will take care of things. Can do?" he asked Johnson.

             
"Oh yes," Johnson answered. "Though it'll take a lot of restraint. From all of us."

             
"What?" Angelique asked. "What will you do?"

             
"I will tell you what we are all going to do, but not until you have been checked out by the doctor."

             
"I told you, I'm a fast healer."

             
"That's good, baby, because you will not be leaving this house again until the doctor says you are perfectly fine."

             
She looked at him and the emotional and physical avalanche hit as both Wyatt and Johnson had known it would. Angelique's poor drowned, paddled, drugged, battered, electrocuted body finally threw in the towel and she dissolved. Bursting into tears she held onto Wyatt as he rocked her.

             
"Get the doctor," he mouthed to Johnson. Wyatt needed to take care of his wife. He began stroking her hair, it's effect immediate and welcome. As he lured her down into trancelike tranquility, Wyatt concocted the plan to
contain
Malcolm Cochran and Donald. Just for the maliciousness of it, he would use Malcolm's own money Angelique had stolen to finance the whole thing. The housekeeper, she would simply find herself waking up back in her own country.

             
And compared to what was going to happen to Malcolm and Donald, for that, Wyatt knew, she should thank her lucky stars.

*****

              Malcolm Cochran woke up early, in a bad mood, disturbed. But instantly he remembered there was a very delectable outlet for his bad mood anxiously anticipating his return upstairs. He dressed quickly and walked to the hallway finding the door to the third floor unlatched.
WTF!?
That addlebrained Margret had probably been vacuuming the stairway, forgotten to lock it. What if Tinka had gone up there? Margret, he curled his lips, would be on her knees blubbering fearful apologies to him before he was done with her for this one. His bad mood increased in spades but it was nothing, nothing, to what he felt when he came to the secure chamber and saw what he saw.

             
The door. Wide open.

             
It can't be
was all his stunned mind could repeat at him, over and over.
Not possible
he bawled in outraged bewilderment to nothing more than a few dust motes floating in the air illuminated by sunshine from his million dollar window.

             
Whatever he's paying you I'll double.

             
For some reason Ira Silverberg's enigmatic entreaty shotgunned through Malcolm's brain. This was
Angelique
he'd taken. How many times had he told himself there was something different
about her?
You should have...

             
A hundred should-haves cascaded through him. Chained her to the bed. Drugged her. Moved her to a small island. Why hadn't he done something like that?
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
For a moment he thought --wait! maybe she's still in there, hiding-- until some part of his brain devolved and called him something it hadn't in many many years, not since he'd built his secure chamber in fact.

             
YOU MORON!

             
She was gone. Straight to Wyatt undoubtedly. He could go look for her but that, he knew, would be a waste of time and he didn't
have
time. He had to flee. Wyatt would be after him and not rest until he was ... he didn't want to think about that.

             
Malcolm turned and raced back to his room seizing his cell phone, yelling into it as he frantically rushed about his room throwing his passport, some clothes, a few basics of what he'd need into a small bag. The imbecile on the other end of the phone couldn't understand him.

             
Jet! Plane! RIGHT NOW!
I have an account with you people this is an emergency you fool wake up!

             
Finally the leasing agent got it,
Yes Mr. Cochran we can have a jet ready for you in forty-five minutes. Where will you be going?

             
"France," he answered. He had a chateau in France and France had some of the best anti-extradition laws in the world, the country that had shielded a famous American rapist for years.

             
I am not a rapist
he screamed to himself as he plunged down the stairs to his study,
I get their consent!

             
What he saw in his study almost killed him on the spot. His bookcase was swung wide, his safe door open.

             
And empty.

             
How could she have done that?

             
His eyes fell on his computer and he knew in his soul there was even worse to come. Like a walking corpse he rounded his desk and tried to turn his computer on. Nothing. She'd destroyed his computer. His records in his safe were gone. His eyes swept over the desk looking for his laptop, his net book, of course they weren't there. It was only then that his eyes registered the small yellow sticky note affixed to the top of his computer and he read its message.

             
FATE LINKS HIM TO ME FOREVER AND A DAY!

             
She'd read the godamned book!
Phantom of the Opera.
She'd figured out there was an escape lever! He yowled. The great Malcolm Cochran opened his mouth and
yowled
. That BITCH! He would find a way. Somehow, someway, he would bring her to her knees
.
He would get himself situated safely in France and then he would spare no expense in retrieving her, his property, his
entitlement
and
FUCKING OBLITERATE HER.

             
Malcolm Cochran did not yet know that his resources had been reduced by more than ninety percent and "sparing no expense" was now a totally empty pipedream for him. But he would find out soon enough. He did, after all, still have his cell phone and though he couldn't get
into
his accounts with it, he could check their recent activity, something he did just before he boarded the rented jet for France.

             
And when he did, Malcolm Cochran looked so ashen that the pilot was afraid the man had had a coronary. Malcolm didn't know it yet, but he probably would have been better off if he had.

Chapter Thirteen

             
Malcolm waited nervously for Wyatt and Angelique's arrival. For the umpteenth time he checked to make sure his security guards, disguised as party guests, were in place. Tinka, he saw, was by the door just in front of the metal detectors greeting the new arrivals as they were screened. Maureen was by the hors d' oeuvres being dutifully served a canapé by Margret. Beth was chattering away with some people he didn't recognize in a side room, and he didn't know where George was, whether he'd even come. Damn, this was driving him up the wall.

             
He had spent months in France, and weeks now he'd been back. And in all of it no complaint from Wyatt, not even an aggressive peep.

             
It had been all downhill for Malcolm. The damage Angelique had done to his holdings had been massive and he'd been able to reclaim none of it. He'd been forced to liquidate all his properties except this, his mansion, and the Performing Center, which paid for itself. He was still wealthy, but he now had nowhere near the resources Wyatt could command. And the bills for his security had been enormous.

             
His sudden flight he'd explained only in cryptic terms that he'd received a seemingly credible threat to his safety from a deranged individual. He gave out no information except a few hints that the person was a Performing Center failure. Tinka and Maureen had both flown to France attempting to extract more information from him but he had revealed nothing. Donald and Margret he had left behind, his canaries in the coal mine. If Wyatt was coming, they were exposed and expendable, let Wyatt tip his hand by taking them down first. But nothing had happened to them, they simply continued on at the mansion untouched.

             
The detectives he'd hired to watch Angelique had also been expensive, with little to show for it. He hadn't had her watched before the abduction like he had with his other "guests," so he didn't know what a normal living pattern for her was, he had nothing to compare her current behavior to. The detectives informed him of her activities --by herself she mostly went hang gliding and to the Performance Center. She wasn't performing anymore but that was to be expected, she was a Cochran now, for sure Wyatt had stopped that. She went to social functions with Wyatt and out to dinner with him, the detectives sent him photographs of her. In the photos she was smiling, happy, relaxed
and so was Wyatt
. From Beth and Tinka he learned that Wyatt had talked her into creating an album of symphonies Wyatt wanted to produce and market, that was what she was now doing.

             
Malcolm knew Wyatt well and could not fathom how Wyatt could make no move if he knew what he'd done to Angelique. But Wyatt had even sent him a note for his birthday with a scribbled inscription "hope you're safe and it all gets worked out soon," along with a very expensive bottle of cognac. Not the action of an enraged husband. He'd even "volunteered" Maureen to run the Performance Center for him while he was away, a position Maureen had eagerly seized and showed no sign of relinquishing.

             
And so, with no threat appearing, Malcolm's homesickness had won out and he had taken a tentative step back into his world, albeit surrounding himself with guards, security and surveillance, all the while looking for one sign, some clue, that Wyatt
knew.

             
Because if Wyatt knew what he'd done to Angelique, there would be an open crusade against him not ending until... what? Would Wyatt kill him? Ruin him (what was left of him anyway) surely, but kill him? Malcolm had watched Wyatt grow up and Malcolm's answer to this question was
yes
. Yes, Wyatt would kill him. Not a contracted hit, but by himself, with his own hands. But Wyatt had done nothing. Nothing! Malcolm had only one possible explanation for this.

             
She hadn't told him.

             
This made sense to Malcolm. He had after all stripped her, fondled her, pressed his naked self against her body. Perhaps she was too ashamed to tell Wyatt this had been done to her. Or maybe she was afraid he wouldn't believe her? Or maybe she didn't want a war in the family, over her, or the public embarrassment of someone --him or Wyatt-- going to prison. No, he was reasonably sure she had decided to say nothing to anyone about what he'd done to her.

             
The downright effectiveness of this reassurance should have cautioned him about trusting it, but it didn't.

             
But he had not seen them in person. And he would not be one hundred per cent sure she had indeed stayed quiet until he did. He wanted to study them closely, especially Wyatt, look for the slightest clenching of a fist, twitch of a facial muscle, rise in the tenor of some vocal cords, anything that would unmask Wyatt, revealing
he knew.
And tonight would be that occasion, indeed it was the very purpose behind his impromptu party, he'd even extended the invitation to Wyatt over the phone personally, with Wyatt accepting, even warmly welcoming him back.

             
He'd also tried to reach Angelique but in that he'd failed. She would not take his calls or return his messages even when he sent them through Tinka. That was to be expected he reasoned though he resented it. She was the cause of all his trouble
she owed him.
And the worst, the worst by far, was that he couldn't figure out how she'd done it! That she'd found the escape lever in the fireplace, that he took as a given, but the rest of it? How? Almost all his fantasies now centered on having her, forcing the information from her, hearing her
plead.